


A Careful Intervention

by Ghostcat



Category: Zero Effect (1998)
Genre: Acceptance, Developing Friendships, Gen, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:39:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostcat/pseuds/Ghostcat
Summary: Twenty years after his resignation, Arlo winds up in Daryl Zero's employ again; passing the time somewhere in Northern Brazil, floating in a lagoon and thinking about his choices.





	A Careful Intervention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alchemise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, alchemise!
> 
> Thank you to my beta readers.

    After the great shitshow that is 2017, Steve Arlo resigns once again from his law firm. He is spent, tired, and empty. Angry too; angrier than he’s been in years, but quiet about it. The rage sits burning in his chest; a slow, flickering fire.

    It is no surprise then to find Daryl Zero sitting one booth over from him at his favorite diner. Arlo had sensed his presence in the weeks prior. An irritation on top of his regular irritation; the feeling he’s being accompanied throughout his day. Like a haunting. It makes him wonder if Zero did something as prosaic as set up a Google alert for ‘Steve Arlo’ to keep track of him. Or if, in that spooky, preternatural way of his, he’d guessed his whereabouts and had merely been biding his time until he could show up and gloat over how all his long-ago predictions had finally come to pass.

    (Zero had been wrong about the particulars but the finish was the same: Arlo is alone. There is no one else.)

    Ever-confounding, Zero does nothing of the sort. He takes a disarmingly soft approach; asking Arlo if he can use his ketchup one day, moving on to weather-related topics the next. Soon enough he’s talking about politics in a vague, slightly bored way, shifting forward and back in his seat. Zero never used to talk about current events. Or culture. He used to own dozens of televisions but they were all set to surveillance cameras. Now he binge watches Netflix and has opinions about The X-Files.

    But that’s not the most surprising thing. The surprising thing is that Arlo doesn’t hate it.

    Zero’s older and his face is softer, much more lined, particularly around the eyes. There’s a give to his chin that’s nearly like jowls but he is otherwise trim. He looks normal. Like a retired history teacher. He orders salads and puts less sugar in his tea, as he no longer drinks coffee. He tells Arlo that he looks well and does it in that slightly stilted way that’s somehow still unchanged.

    “You should come back and work for me, Arlo,” he announces one day, methodically separating the avocado in his salad and piling it on to another plate. “We’re a quieter operation nowadays. You’d provide legal counsel and some client interfacing. Most of my day-to-day is handled by my assistant. You’d barely have to travel.”

    That’s only partly a lie. The assistant, Maritza, is real enough. She’s a solid, curvy young woman with thick calves, loud-print dresses, dark red lipstick and a large-toothed smile. Zero doesn’t seem to alarm her in the slightest, and her handling of arrangements ensures there are no four hour flights to nowhere. Because of course Arlo agrees to come back, he has nothing else going on, and something must be done about his rage. Directing it at Zero has a sweet nostalgic rightness.

    The old/new arrangement goes as smooth as butter for most of the year. His interactions with Zero are not fraught. The clients they take on are not murderers or thieves almost as if they're vetted now. Arlo’s frequent, near-improbable-given-their-history sit-down meals with his once-and-current boss are quiet affairs. Zero gives him books, talks about music and asks him how he's doing. Arlo doesn’t read them, barely listens, and answers, _fine_. Zero still disappears on mysterious benders every two months but doesn’t invite him over to watch the denouement anymore. It’s still Daryl Zero, genius detective, with his squirrely affect and oddly emphasized, meandering way of speaking. He’s just not unbearable, and a part of Arlo resents that a little; he’d looked forward to being “the together one” again, but Zero has robbed him of that option.

 

* * *

 

    After Memorial Day, Arlo takes a pre-planned month-long break and returns to no cases and near-silence. There isn’t much to do but check-in with Maritza and stay at home, staring at his own face in the bathroom mirror with far more sadness than is warranted. He isn’t unattractive and has remained in reasonable shape. His employment with Zero, while unorthodox, pays handsomely. Not that Arlo needs the money, he has more saved up than he knows what to do with. His house is enormous. He hasn’t become a complete drunk. He’s a catch. He should get back out there. Get rid of the gray. Sign up for Tinder. Go on a date. Fuck somebody.

    The thing is, he really doesn’t want to. What he wants most is to sit alongside someone and not talk. Play scrabble maybe. Not lose. Just be.

    Zero calls on Wednesday, alternating between slurring his words and talking too quickly to be understood. He asks Arlo what he’s doing at work. Arlo asks what he’s doing back on meth. Zero takes umbrage; he no longer does that. There’s better stuff out there, healthier options for a man his age, he rants stupidly, before returning to his original point: _what are you doing at woooooooork?_ Arlo wonders what else he would be doing and, with the suddenness of a surprise slap, understands suddenly that Zero _knows_ what happened last year, knew what had finally happened last week, has known all along ever since that first diner appearance. Before Arlo can pick a fight, Zero speaks.

    “I’ll be back next Thursday, Arlo. We’ll… talk then.”

    He isn’t back on Thursday. And the fight Arlo had been preparing himself for fades in his head.

    Like an answer to his prayers, Arlo receives an email from a Stella Good, a piss-poor alias if ever there was, requesting the services of Daryl Zero and willing to pay the hefty price tag without haggling. She asks to meet with Zero directly but Arlo explains that he’s his client representative. Her reply takes nearly twenty minutes. Fine, she writes. Meet me in Santiago, Chile on Friday. As if it was an exclusive restaurant instead of another country nearly six thousand miles away. Luckily for her, Arlo is dying to get out of Los Angeles and accepts.

    On a impulse, Arlo doesn’t tell Zero and asks Maritza to keep it under her hat. Arlo’ll check out the client first and fill Zero in when he gets back from whichever crack den he's fallen into this time.

 

* * *

 

    Due to a series of storm delays, Arlo’s layover in Lima is nearly twelve hours. He checks into an airport-adjacent hotel, showers, shaves, cries, then goes down to the sparsely-appointed restaurant off of the lobby and orders himself a pisco sour. Then three more. Flagging down the bartender for the fourth, Arlo spots Zero. Because of course he’s there. With a two-month-old-sized beard, and dressed in an off-white waiter’s uniform; asking the table in dubiously-accented Spanish if they’d be interested in dessert. They would.

    Arlo motions for that fourth and closes out the bill, too angry to be as drunk as he should be, given the altitude and the speed at which he’d consumed his drinks. Zero’s Lon Chaney bullshit is so heartachingly familiar; he welcomes the rage with a perverse relief, making sure to pass him on his way out and hiss, “If you tell me that there’s been a change of plans, I’m going to murder you myself and make it look like a suicide.”

    Zero blinks. His white shirt has the name ‘Esteban’ embroidered over a side pocket that’s dotted with tiny, faded red sauce stains. “No entiendo, Señor. Perhaps you need assistance to your room?” He motions to another waiter in a series of complicated hand gestures, and two busboys appear out of nowhere and briskly escort him up to his two-room suite. They wait by the door to be tipped. Looking for pesos, he finds a folded note in Zero’s chicken scratch scrawl: _Do not take your connecting flight to Santiago, you're going to São Luís instead. Tickets are waiting for you at the front desk._

    He fumes for approximately a minute before his phone rings. “I changed my mind. I’m going to murder you and chop you into tiny pieces and then blend you into a smoothie. Which I’ll freeze and then feed to your cats.”

    There is silence on the other end. Zero has never owned a cat, as far as he knows. The asshole is probably allergic.

    “You’re drunk. And you know better than to answer your phone that way. What if I’d been the client?” Zero sing-speaks into a long sigh.

    “I haven’t even met the client yet. They don’t know where I’m staying.”

    “True.”

    This is suspicious. Zero never agrees so readily. “Why São Luís?” Arlo asks, finally.

    “It’s the capital of Maranhão,” Zero answers as if that clarifies everything. He doesn’t ask why Arlo kept this meeting from him. Or why Arlo’s three sheets to the wind on a work trip. No, Zero’s lax drawl isn’t mocking at all. It’s gentle, and for some reason this infuriates Arlo even more. He's not a charity case. He refuses.

    The line is quiet. Arlo tries breathing exercises. “Okay, whatever. I need to sleep. I’m exhausted.”

    Another pause. “How are you doing? With the,” Zero pauses, and laughs drily, once, like a cough. “Thing. You finally held a memorial service.”

    “No.” Arlo hangs up the phone and then, as an afterthought, unplugs it from the wall jack.

 

* * *

 

    The unspoken answer to “Why São Luís?” turns out to be this: it’s the closest city to fly into to get to Lençóis Maranhenses, an undulating expanse of white sand dunes, temporary crystalline lagoons and the apparent home base of one Ms. Stella Good, who contacted Maritza with the locale change. After settling into his luxury cabin at the resort where Maritza has booked him, Arlo’s greeted by a short, squat man named Antonio, whose leathery face looks carved from wood. He greets Arlo by name, and is agreeable enough to stand still for few minutes while Arlo squeezes Antonio’s cheeks and chin to confirm it’s not Zero wearing prosthetics. Zero’s fooled Arlo with less in the past, so, for sanity’s sake, he’s thorough.

    Mellowing-with-age though he may be, Zero is still eccentric. He remains unwilling to answer a phone or go to the dry cleaners, or engage in any conversations with strangers without adopting an alias of some kind. Arlo channels that eccentricity sometimes when he’s traveling alone, to see if it works on everyone he encounters as easily as it seems to for Zero. Arlo thinks that it might work even _better_ for him. Because Zero has a subconscious affect; that distant shiftiness he can’t shake. He looks like the most wholesome man you’ve ever met but also, blank enough to be open to interpretation. He could be a mild-mannered family man but he could also be a squirmy, dishonest speed freak. It’s the glint in his beady little eyes. They’re too smart for his face.

    Arlo, on the other hand, is taciturn but mostly reasonable. When playing the part of Zeroan eccentricity, he’s even more so and yet, he finds people fall over themselves to tell him things. To be helpful, seemingly. They seem to think he’s honest. Perhaps he is. Jess told him he was rude and that people sometimes mistook that for honesty. Either way, no one was ruder than Zero. Stupidly, obnoxiously rude, with his slouchy posture and habit of curling himself up into pretzel-like postures as he stares off into space completely ignoring everyone around him.

    Not that Arlo's seen him do that recently. But old wounds have a habit of reopening at the slightest movement.

    The client calls Arlo’s room that evening, shortly after he emails her to let her know he's settled in. She sounds American, slightly nasal and clipped as if she’s in a hurry. Like most clients, she gives him the barest of basics. She’s been on the run for decades, but wishes to be reunited with someone from her past without alerting anyone else from her abandoned life as there is some danger involved. She does not elaborate on what that danger is, not even when Arlo assures her Zero will find it out immediately so it would be best if she didn't waste their time. She ignores his comment and asks to meet for dinner at the local high-end tourist trap restaurant. Arlo agrees. She describes herself as middle-aged, slim, tanned and blonde, with long wavy hair and wearing a white suit. Arlo wonders if she’ll be beautiful, because it sounds like she could be, then immediately feels guilty for having such a thought.

    In the morning, Antonio tells Arlo he is to show him around the desert-locked lagoons because it was requested by his boss, Mr. Burgess (aka Zero). Again, it’s suspicious. But Arlo decides against introspection and grabs a towel, a tattered copy of _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_ and sunblock. He’s still applying it an hour later, sitting alone by a vibrant green pool of water, when he spies a man at the top of an adjacent dune and watches his wiggly approach.

    “Cool, huh?” Zero says and sinks alongside, all elbows and knees, hair falling over one eye. He’s shaved the beard and carries a PBS tote bag with a rolled-up towel sticking out at the top.

    “Yes, ‘cool’ is exactly the word I was thinking when gazing upon this natural wonder of the world.”

    Zero squints off to the side, mouth hanging open, angled slightly, and Arlo waits for him to respond. Giving up, he goes back to reading his novel and that’s when Zero stands and pats him awkwardly on the shoulder, lurching forward to address him. “Come on. Let’s go swimming.”

    He’d never thought that Zero could swim, as if the density of that brain of his wouldn’t allow it and he’d sink like a stone. It’s odd to watch him float there, in a kind of seated position, in loud swim trunks and no shirt. Like a normal person instead of a freak. Arlo walks in to the warm water and floats alongside.

    “I haven’t met the client yet.”

    “I know,” Zero rasps, flipping over and doing an in-place breaststroke, eyeing him with narrowed eyes. “You won’t. I’ve already spoken to her.” He smiles then and it’s unnervingly… happy.

    “What do you mean? Did you already solve the case?”

    “Yes,” Zero sighs, shrugging his shoulders and pushing the wet hair out of his face. “It’s all settled.”

    “What about the person she’s hiding from?”

    “He’s not well, and doctors give him until the end of the year. He's got greater concerns than her whereabouts. She’s safe.”

    It doesn’t add up.

    “What are you calling it? The case.”

    Zero mulls it over, moving his head back and forth like a bobblehead. “The Case of the Man Who Couldn’t Escape His Nature But Found He Had To Try.”

    Twenty years ago, Arlo would have found all this cryptic nonsense unbearable, but right now he’s content to float. The sky is perfect blue and in the distance, he watches the progress of a small plane as it flies lower in altitude until one, two, three, four figures jump out. They hold hands in a circle as they fall, before separating, parachutes activating.

    “This is a prime skydiving destination. I’m thinking of trying it out tomorrow. Care to join me?”

    Arlo frowns. “Why?”

    “Why not?” Zero stretches out the word with a slight whine.

    “Why do I feel like I’m on a paid vacation right now?”

    Zero’s mouth quirks to the side. “Maybe you are.”

    Moving his hand through the water, Arlo looks at his fingers, pruny and suddenly old. Fragile and thin; his wedding band is a dull, dull gold.

    “I think I must be too.” That voice, usually lazy but not so much now, continues in a quiet, precise whisper. “Maybe I am taking a short leave of my objectivity.”

    The unthinkable happens. Zero takes his hand and it’s so awful, Arlo freezes, unable to respond in a normal way. Zero is on his back again and together they float, holding hands, and Arlo wonders if this is his cue to drown himself.

    “For the record, this is weird for me too.”

    Arlo doesn’t know if Zero’s referring to their hands or the awkwardness of too much emotion. Zero doesn’t have emotions; he has theories and mimicry. Arlo can see right through him; this attempt to help. Nevertheless, he holds Zero’s hand tighter as his insides feel as if they are shutting down; organ by organ.

    “Is it helping?”

    “Not really, no.” Arlo can barely finish the sentence. The words are trapped in his throat; compressed and heavy.

    “I’m sorry, Arlo.”

    Arlo is sorry too. So incredibly sorry.

    “Since when do you have feelings?” he asks Zero, after a stretch of watery quiet. Zero doesn’t answer right away but eventually starts talking about a recent case. An actor who was hired for a film, paid handsomely and put through a rigorous course of elocution lessons only to receive an email telling him the production had shut down unexpectedly. He had already been given a salary, which he got to keep, but was stuck on the fact that he could no longer reach anyone on the production side, up to and including his attractive Voice and Speech instructor.

    “I call that one: The Case of The Job That Wasn’t Because It Was Never About The Job.”

    “You need to work on those names.”

    “I know.”

    They do _not_ hold hands on the walk home. The world is sometimes merciful.

 

* * *

 

    At 7PM, Zero shows up at his suite in a linen suit and recites dutifully as if coached, “You’re coming to dinner with us. It’s not my preference either but Gloria insists.”

    “What? Who’s Gloria?”

    Zero rolls his eyes. “The ‘client’,” he says, making quotes with his fingers. “You know. _The Woman_.”

    Arlo shakes his head and then it hits. “Oh.”

    “Oh,” Zero echoes, scratching his face.

    “Wait a minute.” Arlo turns around as if to step further into his room, then back. His body moving senselessly, on autopilot, pivot and pivot, then shifting back to Zero. “The client is _Gloria Sullivan_? Gloria Sullivan from the Case of the Man Who Got So Stressed Out About His Lost Keys That He Had a Heart Attack and It Turns Out They Were in His Couch The Whole Time?”

    There’s a long, dry _eh_ noise. “That’s not the name-whatever. Close enough.”

    They stare at each other.

    “Oh my god, has this whole thing never been a case? Did I just fly thousands of miles to the middle of nowhere SO YOU WOULDN’T BE ALONE WHEN YOU'RE FINALLY REUNITED WITH YOUR LONG-LOST GIRLFRIEND?”

    “Noooooo,” Zero says, but hesitates. “She’s not. My girlfriend. That’s so juvenile. This isn't high school.”

    “Fuck off, DARYL,” Arlo says, slamming the door hard enough to dislodge a photo of a sand dune from the wall and have it clatter-land on the floor. Breathing aside, it’s quiet on the other side of that door. Finally, there’s a shuffling of feet and a dry cough.

    “Okaaaay, you just called me Daryl. That’s progress?” More shuffling, a dry cough. “I’m gonna _go_ and have dinner and I’ll try you again tomorrow.”

    Arlo hangs the photo again, gets dressed and walks to the restaurant where he was supposed to meet Stella Good, who is actually Gloria Sullivan, and spots her and Zero huddled at a corner table. As described, her hair is no longer short and boyish, it’s long and blonde, her face is fuller at the cheeks and she is still beautiful, maybe even more so than she was twenty years ago. Zero’s hand is at her arm, then her shoulder. They sit close to one another and he laughs into her neck, his shoulders rising as if he’s breathing her in. It is so jarringly human: Daryl Zero, master detective, objective and detached, only not at all. Undone by passion, the enemy of precision. Zero used to say that so often; the phrase is permanently tattooed in Arlo's brain. 

    Because he's not asshole, Arlo buys them a bottle of champagne and heads back to his bungalow, knowing he should be thinking about Jess and everything they used to be, only he can’t. That’s over now, gone. All that’s left is absence.

 

* * *

 

    He stays another two weeks and spends most of his time with Zero, who, despite having been told that this non-consensual vacation would be their last, keeps showing up with plans and invitations, in swim trunks, ratty t-shirts, sandals and no stupid mustaches or glasses, no disguises at all. Just him and his bland, squinty-eyed face, carrying himself loosely, with a kind of surprise, all wrapped up in newness.

    They explore the desert-that's-not-one and the lagoons that will shrink to nearly nothing in the fall. It's a stunningly beautiful place; bright and white and glimmering with the occasional jewel-like pool. Antonio is an easygoing guide and Zero does most of the talking. They walk, stop and sit, and swim. Repeating the pattern daily, stopping only when a storm hits. Zero rattles off figures about the probability of getting hit by lightning but glues himself, shivering, to Arlo's side. Arlo pats him—pat, pat, pat—the way he used to pat his childhood pet, Ollie the sheepdog, who would jump on his bed during storms and tremble.

    Just as often, Gloria is there as well, with her small, sharp blue eyes and disarming directness that works like truth serum. In no time, Arlo’s telling her the story of Jess’s accident, his resultant breakdown, and how he’d been unable to put together a memorial service until recently because the pain took his breath away most days. He also shares his less than kind past thoughts about Zero, which make her grin, all gums, listening the way people do when they love the person being spoken of. She’s kind and despite her intensity, encouraging. So he tries. He swims, he reads, he argues with Zero about the merits of Breaking Bad, and folds his lingering anger over the failure to keep his grief to manageable handkerchief-size. He plans his return home. He doesn’t dread it.

    Before he departs, Arlo does the unthinkable. He stands inside the body of a rusty little airplane flown by Gloria herself, and jumps, holding hands once more with the biggest nightmare he’s ever known. Zero’s mouth is open in a silent scream as the wind seems to hold them by their bellies, the coast rushing up to meet them, neither of them knowing what’s coming next. Arlo pulls his parachute cord and for the first time since his wife’s death, doesn’t expect the worst. It will open, he will land. His laughter is pulled out of him like the yank of air into the billowing cupola of his parachute.

    Daryl Zero has to go back to the states too. Gloria Sullivan will stay.

    “You could not go back?” Arlo offers.

    “I can’t ignore my nature forever.” Zero smiles and it’s wobbly like a child’s drawing of a snake. “I am… who I am and I need to keep myself… stimulated. But we’ll find one another again. Gloria makes for an excellent consultant. In life, it’s important to find and keep quality associates.”

    Arlo has no answer to that. They’ve been hiking up the dunes and the crest promises an astonishing view. He crouches at the top and turns to Zero and finds him sitting already, gazing out, an odd, near-shifty expression on his face. “You have a great gift for silence, Arlo. It makes you quite invaluable.”

    There are a great many responses to Zero’s observation running in his mind— _fuck yourself in the face, die a slow death via flesh eating beetles, you’re such a dick, a long kettle-like scream, thanks???, I can’t believe I don’t hate you anymore—_ but uses none of them. He stretches out his legs in the sand, and drifts, listening to his friend (insane but... accurate) and associate (certainly that) hold forth on the odd case that awaits them back in Los Angeles. Arlo hopes it requires travel and spirit gum mustaches. He's ready for it now.


End file.
